Thursday, September 30, 2010

Carol Jago, the President of the National Council of Teachers of English, is currently our guest in the English Department as part of our Department Speakers Series. Check out her Interview with NPR and come to her talk, "Read Write Now: Teaching in a Digital Age," tonight, 7pm, in 1260 Chemistry Bldg.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A huge Kudos to the English Department for achieving a very solid position in the National Research Council's recent rankings of doctoral programs. Whatever one may think of rankings in general and of this one specifically, the parameters chosen by the National Research Council aggregate ranking show us well situated between 53 and 90 out of all 122 institutions participating in the field of English studies. In comparison, Miami U's English Dept. (Miami is one of our university's peer institutions), is ranked between 77 and 103; Georgia State is ranked between 67 and 97; Loyola U of Chicago between 82-103; UW-Milwaukee between 60 and 88; Northern Illinois 77-103; Michigan State 40-71; Marquette 106-116; and Southern Illinois 100-113, to name but a few. Make your own observations using this TOOL.

Jonathan Bush, after too many months in Kabul, Afghanistan, returned home this afternoon, at 3:09pm, at Kalamazoo Airport. He looked a little tired, of course, but it's great to know he is back in town.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

On Thursday, September 30-Friday, October 1, 2010, CAROL JAGO, the president of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), will participate in the WMU English Department’s Scholarly Speakers Series.

Ms. Jago will appear at three events. On Thursday at 7 pm, she will give the lecture “Read Write Now: Teaching in a Digital Age” in 1260 Chemistry Building.
On Friday morning, at 10:30 am, she will lead the workshop “Writing for Publication: Changing the World Word by Word” in Brown Hall 3025. In this event, she will discuss how to write for publication and see your work in print and online.
For those who would like to learn more about the speaker’s ideas before her Thursday lecture, a special presentation by local teachers, “Carol Jago’s Published Work,” will take place from 5:30 to 6:45 pm Thursday in Brown 3045.
Ms. Jago has taught English in middle and high school for 32 years and directs the Writing and Literacy Project at UCLA. She served as AP Literature content advisor for the College Board and now serves on its English Academic Advisory committee. She has published six books with Heinemann, including With Rigor for All: Teaching the Classics to Contemporary Students (2000) and Papers, Papers, Papers (2005). She has also contributed books on Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, and Judith Ortiz Cofer to the NCTE series “In the Classroom.”

The speaker was an education columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and her essays have appeared in English Journal, Language Arts, and NEA Today, as well as in other newspapers across the United States. She edits the journal of the California Association of Teachers of English, California English, and served on the planning committee for the 2009 NAEP Reading Framework and the 2011 NAEP Writing Framework.

Ms. Jago’s visit is being co-sponsored by the Third Coast Writing Project and WMU’s Department of Education and Human Development.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Congratulations to WMU alumnus Dr. Nathanael O'Reilly, who has won a $10,000 Emerging Writer Grant from the Australia Council in acknowledgement both of his current success as a published poet and of his potential as an important voice in Australian cultural life. Earlier this year, Nat's first poetry collection, Symptoms of Homesickness, was published by Picaro Press.

Here's a brief biography, taken from Nat's departmental web page: "Nathanael O’Reilly teaches composition and literature. He holds a Ph.D. in Literature from Western Michigan University, with specializations in Postcolonial literature and theory, British and Irish modernism, and Contemporary Australian literature. Dr. O’Reilly has taught a variety of composition courses, ranging from basic writing to advanced expository writing, and literature courses covering British, Irish, Australian, Postcolonial and American literature. His criticism and poetry have been published in North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and the South Pacific. He is the Vice-President of the American Association of Australian Literary Studies and a member of the Modern Language Association and the American Studies Association."

Monday, September 20, 2010

On Thursday, Todd Kuchta, Associate Professor and Graduate Director, delivered the inaugural lecture of the English Department Speaker's Series on "Semi-Detached Empire. Suburbia and the Colonization of Britain, 1880 to the Present," to a 'full house' in Brown 3025.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Joel Craig's chapbook Shine Tomorrow is available from Lost Horse Press. His poems have appeared in Lungfull!, GutCult, A Public Space, Zoland Poetry, Rabbit Light Movies, Fence, and others. He is the poetry editor at MAKE: A Literary Magazine, and co-founder and curator of the Danny’s Reading Series — where he lives — in Chicago.

Arra Lynn Ross is the author of the book Seedlip and Sweet Apple (Milkweed Editions, 2010), and has published work in Harper’s Ferry, Spoon River Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Alimentum, and Linebreak. Her work has also appeared on Verse Daily and the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day. She earned her PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and teaches creative writing at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan.

Broadsides featuring the poet's work will be created by KBAC artists Jeff Evergreen and Katie Platte and will be available during the event for sale and signing along with other works by the poets. Doors open at 6:30.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The winner of the 2010 Maurice Prize in Fiction is Dr. Melinda Moustakis

The UC Davis English Department and novelist John Lescroart are pleased to announce Melinda Moustakis the winner of the 6th annual Maurice Prize in Fiction contest. Melinda will receive the $5,000 prize for her winning entry, Bear Down, Bear North, selected from 11 novels submitted this year. She is a 2006 graduate of the M.A. English program for creative writers. The $5,000 prize is a gift from John Lescroart in honor of his father, Maurice, for whom the contest is named.
Bear Down, Bear North was selected the best novel submitted by alumni of the creative writing program at UC Davis who haven't published a book-length manuscript. It is John Lescroart's hope to inspire the department's graduates to publish their literary work. Three previous winners have gone on to achieve that goal.
Benjamin Percy, judged this year’s contest. He is the author of The Wilding, Refresh,Refresh, and The Language of Elk among many other publications. He is the recipient of the Whiting Award, Plimpton Prize and anthologized in Best American Short Stories. He is assistant professor in the MFA program at Iowa State University as well as a member of the faculty at the Low Res MFA Pacific University program.
This year's 2010 finalists are Kate Swoboda, (Class of 2004), Palimpsest, and Halina Duraj, (Class of 2003), Fatherland: A Novel.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Casey McKittrick’s essay, “Brothers’ Milk: The Erotic and the Lethal in Bareback Pornography,” appears as part of the thought-provoking and generally provocative new collection, Porn—Philosophy for Everyone: How to Think with Kink (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), edited by Dave Monroe and with a foreword by Gram Ponante. The editor’s introduction singles out Casey’s piece for special consideration: in his words, “I am excited to include his essay, as precious little philosophical literature addresses male homosexual pornography.” The essay examines the subculture of “barebacking” and positions the relatively recent proliferation of filmic representations of its practice within a theoretical framework that attends to its broader cultural and political ramifications.

Khaled Mattawa will be honored at the fourth annual Poets Forum, October 28-30, in New York City. They will read from their work at the Poets Awards Ceremony and be part of intimate panel discussions on contemporary poetry presented by the Academy of American Poets. (from the press release)

The UC Davis English Department and novelist John Lescroart are pleased to announce Melinda Moustakis the winner of the 6th annual Maurice Prize in Fiction contest. Melinda will receive the $5,000 prize for her winning entry, Bear Down, Bear North, selected from 11 novels submitted this year. She is a 2006 graduate of the M.A. English program for creative writers. The $5,000 prize is a gift from John Lescroart in honor of his father, Maurice, for whom the contest is named.

Bear Down, Bear North was selected the best novel submitted by alumni of the creative writing program at UC Davis who haven't published a book-length manuscript. It is John Lescroart's hope to inspire the department's graduates to publish their literary work. Three previous winners have gone on to achieve that goal.

Benjamin Percy, judged this year’s contest. He is the author of The Wilding, Refresh,Refresh, and The Language of Elk among many other publications. He is the recipient of the Whiting Award, Plimpton Prize and anthologized in Best American Short Stories. He is assistant professor in the MFA program at Iowa State University as well as a member of the faculty at the Low Res MFA Pacific University program.

This year's 2010 finalists are Kate Swoboda, (Class of 2004), Palimpsest, and Halina Duraj, (Class of 2003), Fatherland: A Novel.

Monday, September 13, 2010

The home of English faculty Katherine Joslin & Tom Bailey was the site of the warm CAS welcome for Dean Alex Enyedi. The pix show Alex greeting his flock from a rustic stage and guests conversing in the meadows below.

$2000 prize and publication by Anhinga PressFinal Judge: Brian TurnerPostmark Deadline: 9/30/10Previous Winners: Sarah Wetzel, Shane Seely, Neil Aitken, Lynn Chandhok, Roxane Beth Johnson, Steve Gehrke, Fleda Brown.2010 GuidelinesManuscript should be original poetry, not previously published in book form, 48- 80 pages, no more than one poem per page. Include two manuscript title pages: one with name and contact information and one with the name of the manuscript ONLY. Manuscripts are screened and judged anonymously. Multiple submissions are fine as long as the manuscript is withdrawn immediately upon its acceptance elsewhere.The entry fee is $25. Checks should be made out to “CSU Fresno Levine Prize.” Poets can submit more than one manuscript, but each will be considered a separate entry and must be accompanied by the $25 fee.www.csufresno.edu/english/philip_levineor Email Connie Hales at connieh@csufresno.eduSponsored and administered by:MFA Program in Creative Writing at California State University, Fresno

Sunday, September 12, 2010

On Thursday, September 16, Professor TODD KUCHTA of the WMU English Department will deliver the Fall 2010 keynote lecture in the department’s Scholarly Speakers Series. This free public event will take place at 7 pm in Brown 3025.

Dr. Kuchta will discuss his recently published book, Semi-Detached Empire: Suburbia and the Colonization of Britain, 1880 to the Present(University of Virginia Press, 2010). His work draws on postcolonial theory, urban studies, and architectural scholarship to examine the relation between suburbia and imperialism in fiction by H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, George Orwell, and Hanif Kureishi.

Dr. Kuchta specializes in late Victorian and modern British literature and culture, as well as postcolonial studies. He also serves as the department’s Director of Graduate Studies. Currently, Dr. Kuchta is researching terrorism in modern British, postcolonial, and contemporary fiction.

For more information about this or other Scholarly Speakers Series events, please contact Dr. Anthony Ellis of the English Department at (269) 387-2606 or anthony.ellis@wmich.edu.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

As many of you are already aware, Ilse Schweitzer and I are team teaching a highly interactive version of English 3110/Our Place in Nature this fall for the Honors College. We are tremendously excited about teaching this particular course, not only because of our shared interest in environmental issues and nature writing but also because of the timeliness of our topic, particularly in the wake of recent events in the Gulf and the clear evidence throughout the world of the too-often-detrimental impact that human activity continues to have on the earth that we share. To develop what we hope will become a lifelong interest in environmental issues in our students, as well as a lifelong interest in the humanities, we have designed a course that we believe is truly dynamic this semester—complete with a bevy of compelling guest speakers, two off-campus field trips, a screening of the West Michigan-focused documentary “Eating in Place,” and a writers’ workshop led by none other than our own Kate Dernocoeur, a recent graduate of our MFA program who will return in early November to provide our students with a hands-on primer in nature writing that we hope will result in some amazing student work.

But these are just a few of the highlights of our exciting semester to come, and given the diversity and quality of the guest speakers who will be visiting our classroom and our desire to engender a department- (if not university-) wide conversation about the environment and our place in it, we hope that you will keep our class on your radar this semester and join us for one or more of the many events that we have planned.

In keeping with the tech-focused nature of our course and our desire to harness our students’ social networking skills in service to the environment, we have created a Facebook page (cleverly entitled “English 3110: Our Place in Nature”) to which we invite you to become a member. We will use this page to post links that you might find of interest, digital pictures and film footage from our class, as well as information about upcoming events, such as the presentation on digital storytelling that Pen Campbell, the co-director of the Third Coast Writing Project, will be sharing with our students on Thursday, September 16. With Gwen Tarbox’s generous help, we are also in the process of revamping our fledgling classroom blog, which should be up and running soon with all of the “bells and whistles” that we hope our students will employ in their own nature-focused blogs this semester. And we will also shortly have our own gallery on the National Writing Project’s website to celebrate our students’ nature writing successes—and to which we hope you, too, will consider adding your voice as the Second National Day on Writing approaches on October 20th.

In the meantime, however, here is a list of the events that we have scheduled this semester. Feel free to contact us should you wish to attend any of these events OR should you wish to collaborate with us or include your students in any of the events that we have planned. All of our events, unless otherwise noted, will take place in 4045 Brown on Tuesday or Thursday mornings from 11-12:15 p.m.

We’re looking forward to a really amazing semester and hope you will join us as we—and our students—consider “our place in nature.”

September 30 Great Lakes Conservationist and 2010 English Department Distinguished Alumnus Dave Dempsey

October 12 Tom Springer, author of Looking for Hickories: The Forgotten Wildness of the Rural Midwest

October 21 “A Taste of Nature” Farmers’ Market Celebration and Screening of the 2010 Documentary “Eating in Place,” followed by a roundtable discussion with Nurya Love Parish, producer of the film and president of the Grand Rapids Area Council for the Humanities, and Ruth Stein, former ABC News producer and writer and editor of “Eating in Place.”

Please note that this event will take place in the Lee Honors College from 11-1 p.m. on October 21.

October 28 Classroom visit by Dr. Christoph Irmscher of Indiana University, one of this fall’s Scholarly Speakers. Topic TBD.

November 2 and 4 Nature Writing Workshop with Kate Dernocoeur*

*Given the time constraints of this two-day workshop, we will be limiting visitors to our classroom during this week. Please let us know as soon as possible if you are interested in coming in to observe the workshop, however, and we will do our best to accommodate your request.

November 11 Nature-focused Art and Photography with Dr. Bill Davis of the WMU Department of Art

Stephen Whittle and Sara Davidmann are in the process of completing a book proposal for an exciting edited anthology on the significance of photography and other forms of image making (within the sense of the picture) to issues of self-visualisation, representation and the visibility of trans people.

The book will bring together essays by some of today’s foremost trans academics, activists and authors. We are looking for a broad spectrum of subjects and foci and accordingly this call is being made in order to offer other, possibly lesser-known, academics with a serious interest in the area the opportunity to contribute to the anthology.

The book will make a contribution to different disciplines: photography theory, the fine arts and humanities more broadly, transgender studies, media studies, cultural studies, social sciences, and potentially psychology and medicine.

We are currently at the stage of gathering together abstracts from authors and planning our proposal. We anticipate final chapters to be of approximately 6,000 words. We aim to publish in 2011.

If you are interested in submitting a proposal please forward an abstract of 250-300 words by November 1 2010 to photobook@live.co.uk Please include the title for your essay, key points or arguments to be developed, and an overall outline for the chapter. Please also attach a brief (one - two page) c.v.

Additionally, if your chapter will include images please provide an estimate of the number of images and indicate whether you already have copyright clearance. Please let us know if you would prefer your images to be printed in colour.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Chad Sweeney's third book of poems, Parable of Hide and Seek, is being published by Alice James Books this September. A book release reading will take place on October 14 at the Kalamazoo Public Library. Also Chad recently signed a contract with White Pine Press to publish his book of translations next year (from the Farsi with Mojdeh Marashi), The Art of Stepping Through Time: Selected Poems of H.E. Sayeh, with the support of grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the San Francisco Arts Council. Chad's new poems are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Hayden's Ferry, Cincinnati Review and elsewhere. And some personal news: on May 31 Chad's and Jennifer's baby son Liam Greenleaf Sweeney was born.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Chris Nagle recently returned from a long R&R (research & recreation) trip to the UK, during which he presented a paper on “Polyamorousness and the Eighteenth-Century Novel” at the 5th biennial Queer People conference held at Christ’s College, Cambridge (former home to Milton, Darwin, and Borat during their student days). The theme for the conference was “The Uses of the History of Sexuality” and drew participants from nine countries who shared in four days of rich conviviality and stimulating seminar-style panel sessions punctuated by keynote presentations. Highlights of living at college for this brief period included the discovery of Milton’s mulberry tree in the fellows’ gardens (beneath which he reputedly composed some of his early poetry), and regular visits to the well-hidden loo outside Darwin’s old college rooms as well as to a local pub fittingly called The Bath House. Before and after Cambridge, Chris spent time exploring the Lake District and London, respectively, dividing his time between communing with nature, doing research in the British Library, and taking in as much theatre as possible.